Our special issue focused on how the office is being rethought for an always-on economy, anchored by Charles Duhigg’s article about Google’s quest to build the perfect team and what the rest of us can learn from it.

With more people working in collaborations solving increasingly complex challenges, Google’s internal research on what makes teams most effective is a welcome addition to 30 years of teamwork literature. The conclusion that group norms, specifically conversational turn-taking and social sensitivity, correlate to team effectiveness overturns the long-held assumptions that smarts, skills and style trump interpersonal capability.

Parents can now be assured: Regular dinner-table conversation is worthwhile family time that also prepares our children for career success. Forging meaningful connections and developing empathy at a young age turn out to be necessary ingredients for achieving future business results, too. Meanwhile, companies must rethink the meaning of high-performance cultures. It’s time to value and promote workers who cultivate quality collaborations, not only those who produce individual results. Collaborative leaders build teams that withstand the confusion and conflict that often surface during rapid change. Erin O’Toole Murphy, Boulder, Colo.

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CreditIllustration by Tom Gauld

Google’s study of why workplace teams are effective revealed that psychological safety may be the most crucial variable in whether a group of people works together effectively.

My response is a big ‘‘duh.’’ This gets to the very heart of why women are not attracted to male-dominated professions. For a woman, many professions repeatedly present situations that are harmful, hurtful and emotionally exhausting. Women have long known that they cannot expect ‘‘psychological safety’’ in their workplaces.

I am in my 60s and have worked in several professions. The array of behaviors, both blatantly and subtly meant to undermine psychological safety for female workers, that I have encountered has made it obvious why women often opt to work in female-dominated professions.

We have a long way to go in getting to the heart of why we believe making people feel psychologically unsafe increases productivity and team effectiveness. I applaud the attempt in this study to understand how human beings can ‘‘up their game’’ simply by being kinder, more perceptive and more respectful. Barbara Schwarz-Woodaman, Portland, Ore.

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CreditIllustration by Tom Gauld

I take issue with the notion that ‘‘my work is my life . . . if I can’t be open and honest at work, then I’m not really living,’’ as mentioned in Charles Duhigg’s article. With all due respect to millennials and younger generations, who appear to want to share everything with everyone, some of us can be ‘‘open and honest’’ on relevant matters at work without sharing our entire lives. Work has always been very important to my life, but my friends are not necessarily friends from work, and I prize my life away from work as well. I see no need to assume that you must ‘‘reveal all’’ in work groups to be effective at work or in life. Rosalie J. Wolf, New York

How can Charles Duhigg write an entire article on effective meetings without once referencing gender? In 1990, Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, wrote the seminal treatise on men-women talk, ‘‘You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.’’ Every sine qua non quality that Google’s Project Aristotle found underlying effective meetings has to do with female characteristics and values: good communication, empathy, taking time for airing personal issues, equal time to talk. Why not fire half the men and replace them with women at all levels if high-tech companies truly want effective meetings, rather than waste money and time on redundant studies like this one? Ann Grogan, San Francisco

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CreditIllustration by Tom Gauld

College students’ recent calls for campuses to be ‘‘safe spaces’’ where they can thrive intellectually have been greeted with derision and even ridicule. How interesting, then, to read about new research that suggests that for workplace teams to thrive, their members must feel ‘‘psychologically safe.’’ While Google’s remarkable research into the value of safe working environments is presented as innovative new knowledge for organizations looking to increase productivity, students are told that their feelings matter less than the ‘‘free marketplace’’ of ideas.

Has anyone crunched the numbers on student calls for psychological safety? Perhaps we would find that learning is indeed facilitated and enhanced, for the good of all, when ‘‘empathy and sensitivity’’ become core values of our educational institutions as well as our workplaces. Gayle Wald, Washington